Thursday, May 15, 2003

I couldn't see the eclipse on my way home from work (too many trees and buildings), but when I got back I went out into the street with a few of my housemates and we found a spot where we could see the moon just starting to come out of the shadow. We admired it for a few minutes but then became moderately alarmed when we realized that the moon was travelling left to right, but it was the left side of the moon that was coming out of the shadow. It was Daniel (junior astronomer extraordinaire) who figured it out. The moon appears to move left to right, due to the rotation of the Earth. However, its actual movement relative to the Earth is right to left (he deduced this from the fact that the moon rises an hour later each day). During an eclipse we are able to see both kinds of movement at once. Very cool.

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